Re: Worthless chip manufacturing plant??

@FutureShock999

I worked in the electronics business for more than 40 years. I knew people who loved the business and knew their products inside and out, and others who were only looking for their next job, with better salary, perks and stock options. Over time the latter outpaced the former. Most of the companies I worked for over the years are gone; in another post I mentioned IBM, and another company still around is Fairchild Semiconductor.

Did the others -- Digital and Gerber Scientific among them -- fail because of women? No, because women simply weren't allowed into the Boy's Club on Mahogany Row. As my career advanced I spent enough time hanging out with the boys on the row to know they were little more than little boys in expensive suits. The off-hours conversations were reminiscent of fifth-grade locker room banter. No way they'd let the girls see them in their natural environment.

I knew a few female managers, some good, some bad, just like their male counterparts. When I had the opportunity I tried to fill open positions with qualified female candidates, and never regretted the decision. Some of the men, on the other hand, would try to play the "old-boy" routine. You know, we're all mates and all that. Never once did a woman who worked for me try to play on her gender to do an end run. Okay, I was a squishy liberal, but the diversity made work more interesting and I couldn't help noticing the men started wearing better ties.

I'm not claiming businesses would run any better if there were more women running them, but I don't think they'd run any worse, and at least they'd be more representative of reality.

Re: Worthless chip manufacturing plant??

I worked in IBM's Dutchess County, NY, chip plant in 1970, shortly after it was built. New York State built them an exit from Interstate 84, "Lime Kiln Road." The building was freakin' HUGE. As a contractor I had to park in the outer limits and enter through the main entrance. From there it took 10 minutes to walk to where I was working, troubleshooting an early foundry machine. There weren't many support columns, and they could rearrange the offices and corridors at will. Which they did one weekend, totally baffling me. If you removed all the offices it would make a heckuva skating rink, bumper-car track, rifle range.... I later (1987) worked in a fairly large DEC plant in Westfield, Mass., but nothing like IBM's Hopewell Junction venue.

Headline

Re: Youtube not idiot viewing, article author statement is.

Agree wholeheartedly. I administer a hobbyist forum running phpBB. Many of our members post videos of their projects to YouTube, and we happily embed them in forum posts. YouTube has made a positive contribution to our experience.

Isn't watching TV punishment enough?

I've always found it hard to believe the UK government has trucks driving around looking for unlicensed TV sets. The idea of even licensing a TV set is pretty hard to grasp, too. Bloke from the UK I used to know told me he gutted the horizontal oscillators out of salvaged sets and got them running on the bench, just to drive the trackers nuts. This would have been in the 60s. Dunno how true that was. Now we need to devise electronic countermeasures to spoof phony cell towers. Reward the hounds with a few more foxes to chase.

Not that this is relevant

But it's Sunday afternoon and I'm bored. One of the most-interesting dining experiences of my life was sitting down to a plate of paella in a back-street restaurant in Madrid, and spying a bottle of American Tabasco sauce on the table. I've had HP sauce too, in the UK and the Bahamas. Good stuff. Your beers and ales are pretty good as well. But I'd rather live in Paris if I could afford it, for esthetic reasons.

Just remember, though, it wasn't your culinary and brewing expertise that let you rule the planet for so long. It was only because you had flags.

Lenovo dead?

I don't think so. The Independent is the only consumer-oriented news source on the first page of a Google search for "lenovo malware." Forbes and CNNMoney have articles, but does the average PC buyer read them? ThinkPads, darlings of the business community, were spared. Even if Bob Bloke reads about the "firestorm," we've all dealt with enough non-techies to know they have a short memory span, and don't understand what such malware does anyway.

While I agree that Lenovo should be subject to the BOFH's cattle prod for this, I think speculation on their imminent plunge off the cliff as a result is greatly exaggerated. And we probably can assume Lenovo will be more careful in the future. They execute incompetent business managers in China. Not that the other PC mfrs will learn from this. Lenovo could, by default, become the laptop source of choice.

Note to the first three commentards

Times Square

This is serious. The Times Square NY store is listed. You'd think they'd want to keep waving the flag there. Amazingly, I can't find my local store on the list. It's in a good retail location but rarely do I see customers inside as I walk past.

How bad is this film?

Kudos to El Reg

For publishing the names of the affected companies. Scanning Associated Press, Bloomberg and other U.S. news sites, I don't see that information. Despite the site de-design, the Reg is still a go-to place.

Meanwhile, Amy Pascal has been kicked out of the chair at Sony Pix. But not because of the hacks. No, because of what she said in emails about the president and some actress. Corporate hacking will continue to be a growth industry as long as corporations refuse to take responsibility for their reckless handling of private information. Who's next?

There's gold out there

Spent some time looking at artists', architects' and musicians' sites today. Whoa! FLASH FLASH FLASH. Sure, you can step past it, but they paid for that glitter and by gee they want you to see it. There's money to be made reworking those pages, once John Q Public wises up. I won't hold my breath while I drink my beer, though.

Not here

Some site crashed Firefox this morning and I had to "Refresh" the installation, which wiped out several mods. The first thing I did when it restarted was revert to the old search-engine scheme. Then I deleted Yahoo and Bing from the list and made DuckDuck Go my default. 'Tis a pity the unwashed masses will settle for whatever gruel is placed in front of them and called steak.

Didn't have to look

To know Lewis Page wrote this article. Pidgeon may be a charlatan, but that doesn't change the facts about human-caused CO2 emissions. Lewis, I like your articles about military stuff. Stick to that area.

They can call me anything they like

If it gets me two years of free broadband! My Comcast experiences are mixed. Getting connected in the first place took >1 hour on the phone, getting bounced from customer service (?) to tech support, before finally getting lucky and talking to the only person who knew what to do. It was simple: Add a zed at the end of your account number. On the other hand, when a billing error (tried to double bill me last month) arose, I was able to resolve it through online chat with no hassles.

I live in an "adult" (55 or older) condo complex in Florida, and most of the time Internet access is solid and fast. A couple of brief outages over 2+ years. Sure better than ATT! I'm paying ~$70/mo for an "Up to 50 Mbps" connection, because I spend a lot of time on Netflix (+ VPN) and I want to avoid the unwritten data-cap issue. My basic cable TV fee is a mandatory part of my condo fee, so I overlook the ISP cost.

Comcast has many employees, and training/management issues. But these problems aren't limited to the cable industry; wherever money changes hands, "service" quality is going downhill. Having worked in phone tech support, I think I understand the underlying reasons. Personnel are given tight quotas for average call times, but limited authority or options for solving callers' problems. People charged with retaining unsatisfied customers must also have quotas. The stress level is high, and there's no relief. Disconnect from one call and another one is right there. No time to sit back and catch your breath. It's no excuse, I know, but it speaks loudly about the conditions of labor in a "service economy." The only stuff that trickles down in this economy is stuff you don't want landing on your head.

When in Rome

Do as the Romans. The Facebook corporation is a guest in Turkey. Guests should respect local laws and customs. Religious zealots who choose to remain in countries more tolerant of satire and secularism than their ancestral homes also should respect local laws and customs. Respect is a two-way street.